Link only available on sub pages

This young man certainly deserved his victor’s golden headband – at least, if his perfectly trained body is anything to go by. But would you have thought over one hundred years ago this work by painter and sculptor Sascha Schneider was set up in a kind of fitness studio as a model for physical training? But it was – at Schneider’s own initiative. For some time, with the help of paragons from antiquity as well life models, Schneider had been trying to express a physical ideal.

He originally trained at the Academy of Fine Arts in Dresden and spent some years as a professor of art in Weimar. But Schneider left Weimar for exile in Italy since there, in contrast to the German Reich, homosexuality was not criminalised. During his years in Italy, Schneider studied numerous sculptures to develop his knowledge of classical art. There too, he found the model and inspiration for this figure made in 1911, most likely in his studio near Florence. Around the same time, other works by Schneider were rejected in Dresden, condemned for alleged obscenity. Nonetheless in 1913, as a gift from a private collector, the Albertinum took this sculpture into its collection – probably not least as Schneider’s Victor was informed by the same traditions as the antiquities collection shown here at that time.

Sascha Schneider soon returned to Dresden. In 1919, he founded the Kraft-Kunst institute. As curator Andreas Dehmer explains, this was a kind of bodybuilding centre for life models:

“The Kraft-Kunst institute was primarily designed for men to train and develop an athletic physique, and also pose at the same time as Schneider’s life models. His Victorious Youth was set up at the centre of this palaestra, this exercise room – in certain sense, also as a shining example.”